You Don't Know Me
by Sarahjane
Summary: Emily Gilmore's thinks about her life.


DISCLAIMER: None of these characters are mine. They belong to Gilmore Girls and are used here without permission for no financial gain.  
  
Author's Note: This is MY version of why Emily Gilmore is the way she is. (My twin sister KitLee has her own version. Just so you know, mine's better. :P) I got this idea after watching the episode with Lorelei Gilmore the First. Anyway, r/r please!  
  
You Don't Know Me  
  
When I was a little girl, my family wasn't poor, but we definitely weren't rich. My father was older than most of my friends' fathers, and my mother was younger than most of their mothers, so my family was viewed as being a little weird. I say "friends," but in they were really just classmates. None of them liked me because, as I said, my family was viewed as being weird. Maybe we were. My father was already 40 when I was born, and my mother was only 19. I'm sure you're thinking "Big deal," but back then it was a big deal, big enough that I grew up without any friends, surrounded by whispers from the other mothers.  
  
Growing up, my mother was my best friend. She was very sweet, gentle, and understanding, and I adored her. She loved to play dolls with me, teach me how to bake, and read to me. Even though I didn't have any friends, I had her, and I never felt lonely.  
  
My father was also a kind, gentle man. He adored my mother and me. I think that he had pretty much given up on having a family, so when he married her and had me, he was very happy.  
  
My perfect world was shattered quite suddenly when I was fourteen. My mother became ill with leukemia, and she died a few months later. I felt as if everything I knew had disappeared, and I was too upset for words. My father was also heartbroken. Day after day he sat in the living room and stared at a picture of my mother as though willing her to live again. He stopped caring about himself or me, and instead mourned for her.  
  
With my mother dead and my father little more than a ghost, I didn't know what to do. Finally, my father roused himself from his grief long enough to send me to boarding school in Connecticut. (I got a scholarship. Otherwise we could never have afforded that.) I was nervous but happy. I was eager to leave our home in Chicago, where my mother's memory lingered on everything. Once I was away from home, I felt that I could begin to heal.  
  
But school was torture. I had never noticed that we weren't wealthy before, but next to my classmates' fine things, mine appeared junky. They had grown up with everything they wanted, and I envied them. To make matters worse, they constantly teased me for wearing scuffed shoes and owning tattered suitcases.  
  
I suffered through school until I met Richard. He was so smart, and he treated me better than anyone else. He went to Chilton, an all-boys' school near mine, and from the first time I met him at a joint dance, I fell in love with him. After years of taunts, his kind words were like a gentle rain that healed my scars.  
  
Eventually we married, even though his mother was furious. (She didn't--and still doesn't--consider me to be good enough for him.) I was so happy. At last I had a family again.  
  
After Lorelei was born, I remember leaning over her crib. The room was so beautiful. Richard had bought everything we could think of to make it perfect, and it looked like a room for a princess.  
  
"That's what you are," I whispered. "You are a princess. And your father and I love you very much." I smiled at her. "I will give you everything your heart desires," I promised. "I'll give you everything I never had. I will make sure that you never have to suffer like I did."  
  
And that's why it hurts me when Lorelei scorns me so much. She doesn't understand. She thinks that we showered her with things because we--rather, I--don't care about anything but money. Her allegation hurts me. I just wanted to make her happy. I just wanted to give her the things that I could never have when I was a little girl. But she doesn't understand. She doesn't know me. 


End file.
